


in the drift

by aphchina



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pacific Rim AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 11:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11827827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphchina/pseuds/aphchina
Summary: They first meet in between classes, when Lance declares he will defeat Keith at all costs, publicly, in the school's cafeteria, in front of their entire year.Keith, miraculously, forgets this entire event almost immediately afterward.





	in the drift

**Author's Note:**

> i havent watched pacific rim in years so its LOOSELY BASED like u dont have to have seen the movie just know two people who are mind linked (drift compatible) fight aliens (kaiju) with robots (jaegars) and in this AU the garrison basically trains you to be in the military, & group A is specifically jaegar pilots who are then trained at the base. uhhh yeah thats all u gotta kno i think read the wikipedia synopsis if u have questions or concerns

i.

  
They first meet in between classes, when Lance declares he will defeat Keith at all costs, publicly, in the school's cafeteria, in front of their entire year.  
  
Keith, miraculously, forgets this entire event almost immediately afterward.  
  
To him, a trivial rivalry is a distraction from what he should be doing- studying, training, anything he can to graduate the garrison and become a jaegar pilot like Shiro.  
  
Shiro, who is risking his life for the world every day. Shiro, who believes Keith could be just as important as him one day. Shiro, who he cannot disappoint.  
  
He's kicked out of the garrison a two years and three months later. Lance takes his place in Group A, the pilot's division. His future is thrown away, but Lance's is sealed.  
  
ii.

  
The second time they meet, Keith is visiting Shiro at the base of operations. Another mission, another farewell- he never knows if this will be the last.  
  
He is there as family, but Lance is watching as a future pilot. The trainees stare in awe at the workings of the jaegar. Keith stares in pride at Shiro.

The jaegar whirrs to life.  
  
Lance somehow manages to grab his arm on the way out.  
  
"Hey, I know you!" he says, bright blue eyes boring into Keith's, "You're my old rival!"  
  
Keith cannot remember this boy for the life of him, but his eyes are a punch to the solar plexus.  
  
"Come watch us train," Keith is already being tugged in the direction opposite from the exit, "You've gotta see me fight. I'm totally better than you probably remember."  
  
It is not until he is dragged into the sparring room, with a whole tour given on the way, that he is able to interject:  
  
"Who exactly are you again?"  
  
Which starts an extremely awkward moment in which Lance's jaw drops open and the room goes mostly silent (though it was pretty quiet to begin with).  
  
"You don't remember me?" Lance says, his expression slowly shifting from shock to disbelief to anger, "You- we- we were rivals, Lance and Keith, neck and neck?"  
  
And now the room really is silent, and more than a couple people are looking at them, and curse Lance and his overdramatic loud-  
  
A staff is thrown at his feet. Lance is staring him down, another staff in hand.  
  
"Spar with me. Here. Now. If your back hits the floor, you lose. Best two out of three."  
  
His eyes flash a darker blue now, complicated and turbulent like the ocean.  
  
Keith picks up the pole.  
  
iii.  
  
They see each other a lot after that. A lot, a lot. He's volunteering in the mechanics department to be around Shiro, mostly, but Lance takes every opportunity to drag him into the sparring room. Keith is, in fact, the only one who can match Lance hit for hit.  
  
The score is mostly even, but Lance declares he will not rest until he has 99 wins over his head.  
  
And somehow, Keith doesn't mind.  
  
Along the way, he meets Hunk, the genius mechanic-in-training, Pidge, the prodigy scientist- "What do you mean, only sixteen?" -Matt, Pidge's scientist brother and Shiro's good friend, Coran, the trainee's instructor, and Allura, Shiro's genius and headstrong copilot.  
  
Keith respects all of them a great deal. He also respects Lance, but he hides that deep, deep down, and instead channels his energy into dropping the idiot to the floor.  
  
It's comfortable. Homey, in a way, and while he may not be a candidate for a jaegar pilot, he's happy.  
  
iv.  
  
Nine months, six days after he meets Lance at the base, Shiro loses his arm in combat.  
  
He'll be fine, they tell Keith, he'll heal, be fitted with a prosthetic, and then he and Allura can go back out.  
  
He should feel lucky, the doctors say, jaegar pilots are more often killed than injured.  
  
Keith channels it all into sparring with Lance.  
  
He's with Lance more often than not now. They hit heads, sure, but it's more of a rhythm now than ceaseless fighting. Hunk and Pidge still take turns tearing them apart, but now it's all in good fun.  
  
A snide comment here, a witty remark there.  
  
Lance is an almost calming presence.  
  
v.  
  
Three weeks after Shiro is sent to recovery, Lance is called into action to replace him.  
  
It's no surprise really, he's been top of his class ever since Keith was kicked out years ago.  
  
And yet, Keith is still taken by surprise.  
  
"They want you to pilot?" he says, leaning against Lance's room door. "They want you to pilot for real?"  
  
"Well, yeah man, why else am I here?" Lance is applying some weird cream to his face that makes him look like a glazed donut. He's not even looking in Keith's direction.  
  
"But are they even sure you're ready?"  
  
"Dude, I'm top of my class. I'm like a cool ninja strategist sharpshooter pilot superhero. It's about time."  
  
"Have you ever even done a simulation?"  
  
"Well, no, duh, I don't have a copilot, so..."  
at that, Lance spins to look Keith right in the eye, glossy face slowly slipping into panic.  
  
"I don't have a copilot, Keith, I haven't even thought about that! Who the hell is going to be my copilot?"  
  
Keith shrugs, avoiding his eyes.  
  
"They'll find you someone. They always do."

vi.  
  
And they try. For five days, they try, going through every trainee on base and even a few from the garrison.  
  
Lance is not drift compatible with any of them.  
  
Keith has never been the empathetic type, but seeing the optimism drain out of Lance's step is downright depressing. The falter in his smile is near painful.  
  
He has to say something.  
  
But when he bursts into the training area- where Lance is holed up, no doubt- to give the pep talk of the century, he realizes he's been beaten to the punch.  
  
Sitting on the floor, sporting a new prosthetic and his best Concerned Dad™ face, is Shiro.  
  
"It- it just feels so hopeless, like maybe I'm the problem, you know-"  
  
Lance is talking, completely unaware of Keith's presence.  
  
"Because fifty trainees, and I don't have a single match? I'm the fuck up. And I know they're thinking it too, that I'm not even worth all this trouble."  
  
"Now, Lance, you know that's-"  
  
"It's not true at all!" Keith's mouth bursts open, and Shiro and Lance snap their heads up to look at him.  
  
"It's not. There are special cases like siblings, spouses, stuff like that, but most people don't find their copilots for months. Shiro didn't find Allura until he was a year into training. And she was a general, here for a diplomatic meeting. She wasn't even a pilot."  
  
Shiro shrugs. "She drop kicked me when she visited our sparring class and I knew she was the one."  
  
"Okay, but I've tried every drift test there is. Nobody matches up. Maybe... maybe it should have been Keith in the pilot seat all along."  
  
Lance isn't looking at either of them, but is instead staring at the ceiling. His cheerful, confident attitude is completely gone, and all that's left is insecurity and doubt.  
  
"Maybe it can be Keith."  
  
Shiro's voice has steeled, Lance's head dropping back down and looking straight at him in shock.  
  
"It  _what_?"  
  
"Lance, think about it. You've been training with Keith for months. You're a perfect match. You complement each other."  
  
Keith's head is reeling.  
  
"No no no no no no no no, I hate him. I  _hate_  him. We're rivals. enemies. I can't drift with-"  
  
"Lance."  
  
Shiro's tone shakes with enough authority to shut him up.  
  
"Just give it a try. That's all I'm asking. You'll try too, right Keith?"  
  
"I....." his brain is racing, calculating, trying to make sense of- "I can't. I can't pilot a jaegar yet, I just, I'm not ready to-"  
  
"Keith."  
  
A firm hand on his shoulder.  
  
"I know you can. I know you're ready for this. You can take my place. At least try."  
  
When his eyes rise, they see the gray in Shiro's hair, the metal of his other arm, the tired look in his face. He thinks about the world that his brother protects, about the other children orphaned by the kaiju.  
  
"I'll try."  
  
vii.  
  
They drift. Almost.  
  
Their first try, Keith ends up lost- he is stuck in a memory of his father's face, of holding an engraved knife in a ruined city.  
  
Images flash, and he is hearing screams, destruction, and in his hand is still the knife. His mother's knife, his father's last gift.  
  
He is crying, lost and afraid, but then he flashes to seeing him- to seeing Shiro, his hero, and he has family again, and Shiro wants him to be like him, to pilot like him, because people need him to save them and-  
  
He snaps back into reality, gasping, as Lance opens his eyes silently next to him.  
  
They call it a day.

viii.  
  
He visits Lance's room that night. He doesn't completely know why, why he suddenly decides he must see his rival-he-can't-seem-to-hate-slash-copilot at 1am, but when he knocks on Lance's door he's let in.  
  
"Hey man." is all Lance says, and all he really needs to say for Keith to feel like a weight has been lifted.  
  
They don't talk about what happened in the drift. They talk about space, about aliens and whether there are more, less threatening ones out there.  
  
Lance distracts him from the past, and that night is the one Keith grows truly fond of his dopey smile.  
  
ix.  
  
They drift. Really.  
  
This time, Keith focuses on Lance's memories: he sees his mother's smile, his siblings and aunts and uncles and Hunk and the garrison, and everything is wrapped in enough warmth and Lance that he pulls through.  
  
They drift.  
  
And suddenly Keith is Lance, and Lance is Keith, and god, he can feel what Lance is thinking.  
  
They curl their fists in sync.  
  
"Well, there you have it folks!" Hunk's voice comes through the comm. "Test complete!"  
  
It takes a while. It takes a while for them to get it down, mostly because Keith is used to quiet where Lance thinks loud and clear, but they figure it out. Their opposites balance out, and when they can successfully move and Voltron like their own limbs, Lance's bright eyes and "Sharp work today, samurai," makes it feel easy.  
  
With Lance, life sometimes feels easy.  
  
Their sleepovers in each other's rooms have become normal now, and their hips are practically attached at the waist.  
  
"Inseparable," Pidge will say, rolling their eyes when they come by, "Seriously. Get a room."  
  
"We aren't doing anything, Pidge" Lance will pout, sticking his head in the kaiju remains again.  
  
x.  
  
"It's weird. I used to think I was a weak link." Lance says one night, his fingers scissoring in Keith's hair. He's pretending to cut the ends, a fantasy Keith entertains only because he likes Lance playing with his hair.  
  
"Weak link?"  
  
"Yeah, like maybe I wasn't as cool as I wanted to be. Maybe I was just a goofball."  
  
Keith's eyebrows knit together.  
  
"But when we started drifting, I saw myself through your eyes, like how you see me, and I... I didn't see what I thought I would at all. And it helps me, sometimes. So I guess I wanted to say thanks. For, uh, that."  
  
"How do I see you?"  
  
Lance shakes his head and smiles.  
  
"What do you see in _my_  head?"  
  
"I don't know. It's pretty empty. There's constant Shakira playing, though."  
  
Lance throws a pillow is thrown at Keith’s face. Keith laughs.  
  
xi.  
  
The freakiest thing is knowing he likes Lance, and knowing Lance likes him, and not doing anything about it.  
  
Because the world is ending, and kaiju are coming, and complicating things now would only hurt.  
  
So they can dance around it, they can tiptoe it but they cannot plunge in, the way Keith wants to, the way Lance wants to.  
  
When the alarm blares, and their names are called to Voltron, and they drift, Keith doesn't see his father anymore, or the past at all.  
  
He sees Lance, his soft hair and bright eyes, and he sees a future, of a life in a world without kaiju.  
  
Their fists curl in sync.  
  
They're going to make that future. Together.

**Author's Note:**

> ughghhgh its 3:09 am i wrote this bc i had the idea for this AU and got super pumped but lost steam after the first sentence so the writing is extremely questionable and unedited i may go back and fix things or not depending on how much ppl actually like it smash that kudos button love u all xoxoxo


End file.
